The present invention relates to a device and a method for identifying anomalies on medical instruments.
Reusable medical instruments are frequently exposed to conditions that are detrimental to materials as a result of the harsh conditions during cleaning and sterilization (action of chemicals, high temperatures, etc.) and the high turnover. In addition, the medical instruments must be quickly ready to use again, which means that a thorough examination of the instruments before an operation is often counter productive since it is linked to a high level of time involvement. Since a thorough examination also requires the employment of specialized personnel, it simultaneously also has an adverse effect on total costs.
Possible faults or anomalies on such instruments may be organic residues from previous operations, for example. Should these come into contact with the respectively subsequent patients during subsequent operations, this can result in infections.
Similar problems are also posed by damage to the medical instruments. This may involve anomalies such as damage or defects in the form of corrosion and/or fractures, for example. Besides the risks of infection that are also linked to such anomalies, they also pose a threat of injury if such an instrument breaks in the process of an operation, for example.
Within the present invention the term “anomaly” is intended to be understood to mean any unusual coating on the instrument or any unusual change in the material of the instrument that can be identified on the outside, albeit only faintly and possibly without being visible to the human eye. Examples that may be mentioned in this context are soiling, such as organic residues or residues of cleaning agents, and damage to the material, such as factory faults or damage as a result of fractures, cracks, corrosion, substantial scratches that impair function, and the like, for example.
Risks of infection and injury of the aforementioned type must be avoided by all means. On the other hand, cost and time-saving considerations have priority more and more frequently today. Particularly in the area of cleaning and sterilization of instruments, it is more and more often the case that hospitals hand this work to external service providers. However, these are not always able either to employ qualified personnel or to provide the latter at least with the appropriate time for the necessary checks in order to be able to work cost effectively. This then again results in disadvantages for the quality of the cleaning and/or sterilization.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,997,847 B2 describes systems and methods for processing a plurality of surgical instruments for cleaning and/or packaging. Therein, the surgical instruments are identified and oriented according to type and using an automated apparatus. Further, specialized tools are provided for automatically opening and closing surgical instruments, flipping instruments and assisting in the processing and maintenance of surgical instruments. Instruments may further be inspected for cleanliness via machine vision using image comparison with stored images resulting in an information about the possibility of contamination in general. The provided information is therefore limited to the mere possibility of the existence of a contamination. No information is achieved about the kind or amount of contamination.